UW Petroleum Engineering Program Sees Big Enrollment Increase

November 12, 2012 — As a daughter of parents in the oil and gas industry, University
of Wyoming student Rebecca Podio of Newcastle is following in her folks’ footsteps.

Demand for quality petroleum engineers is high nationwide,
and the timing couldn’t be better for students such as Podio, who is seeking a
petroleum engineering degree at UW. The national demand also helped Darrin Moe,
a recent UW petroleum engineering graduate from Spearfish, S.D., secure an
engineer trainee position with Ensco, based in Houston, Texas.

The combined UW Department of Chemical and Petroleum
Engineering is seeing the highest enrollment of any department in the College
of Engineering and Applied Science -- especially on the petroleum side, which
has experienced a huge 55 percent increase from a year ago, from 144 students
to 219 this fall.

“Our petroleum engineering program has such a large
enrollment because there is a strong demand from industry for petroleum
engineers,” says David Bagley, head of the UW Department of Chemical and
Petroleum Engineering. “That demand has translated into high starting salaries
for petroleum engineers compared to other engineering fields.”

It was just seven years ago that the petroleum engineering
program was reinstated at UW. Just 26 students were enrolled when UW officials,
in 1996, decided to eliminate the program. The industry was suffering from falling
energy prices worldwide.

UW restarted the program in 2005 and, the following fall, 47
students enrolled, says UW chemical engineering Professor Brian Towler, who was
the department head at that time. Collectively, the chemical and petroleum engineering
department today has 444 total students, including undergraduate, graduate and
doctoral candidate students.

“For the first time, the Department of Chemical and
Petroleum Engineering is the largest engineering department in the College of
Engineering and Applied Science,” Towler says.

The resurgent petroleum engineering program at UW attracted
Podio, who graduated from Newcastle High School in 2007.

“I chose to attend UW because, like a lot of Wyoming
students, financially it only made sense to stay in-state because of the low
cost of tuition, the Hathaway Scholarship and the other scholarship
opportunities,” she says. “My entire family works in the oil and gas industry,
so I always thought I would probably go into this field. Fortunately, for me,
UW's petroleum program was restarted shortly before I graduated from high
school.”

Her father, Andy, owns AP Production Service in Newcastle,
and her stepmother, Dolores, also works for the company.

Podio --who will graduate in May and also will receive bachelor’s
degrees in in finance and economics from the College of Business -- says she
hopes to secure a position as a petroleum engineer.

“Eventually, I would like to work in petroleum price
forecasting or acquisitions financing and valuation, which is why I chose to
pursue degrees in economics and finance as well,” she adds.

Moe’s new employer, Ensco, is an offshore drilling company,
with company headquarters in London. Working mainly in the Gulf Coast, Moe is
in the engineer training program -- a five-year program designed by the company
“to help expose and prepare us for being a full-time engineer.”

“UW’s petroleum engineering program is the reason where I am
at today. It gave me the knowledge and skills needed for the real world,” Moe
says.

He adds that UW’s career fair helped market his skills,
saying company recruiters are looking for more petroleum engineering students.

“This is a good example of how highly people think of the UW
petroleum engineering department, even after only a few years of being
reinstated. I had numerous job opportunities, which not a lot of other college
graduates can say,” Moe says. The Ensco representative who interviewed Moe
indicated he had been recruiting UW students the last four years.

“He told me every UW graduate they had hired had been a
success,” Moe adds. “He told me, ‘If you keep catching big fish from the same
fishing hole, you are going to keep going back to that fishing hole.’ In a way,
I have to thank the UW graduates before me for helping me land this job.”

Bagley says the timing is right for UW students because of
the market’s demands for quality petroleum engineers. He says industry demand
is driven by factors such as the price of crude oil, which has been strong for
a number of years, due in no small part to China’s increasing demand for crude
oil.

“This price has made the search for and exploitation of
unconventional reservoirs economically viable,” Bagley adds. “Unconventional
reservoirs are more difficult to produce and require more technology and
capable engineers than conventional reservoirs. So, more engineers are needed
to exploit these resources.”

Another reason driving the demand for more petroleum
engineers is that the industry allowed its engineering workforce to age by not
hiring a steady stream of new talent during the 1990s.

“This was for economic reasons, but the result was a severe
shortage of engineers once the demand for oil increased. There was a shortage
of engineers with 5-10 years of experience,” Bagley says. “The experience gap
can't be closed by hiring a lot of new engineers, but the best of the new
engineers will likely see tremendous opportunity for advancement for several
years until the experience gap closes.”

Representatives from many of the top energy companies come to
UW each fall to recruit the department’s students. Among them are Marathon Oil,
Hess Oil, Occidental, BP, Encana, Baker Hughes, Sinclair and Halliburton.

Also, companies such as Murex, DCP Midstream,
ConocoPhillips, Anadarko, EOG, ONEOK and QEP Resources have sent
representatives looking for UW petroleum students during the annual career fair
or for on-campus interviews.

“As you can see, companies from all over are seeking our UW
graduates,” Bagley says.

Photo:Rebecca Podio, a University of Wyoming senior from
Newcastle, is among a high number of petroleum engineering students in the
Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. The number of petroleum
engineering majors has increased 55 percent from a year ago -- a huge increase
considering that the program was reinstated just seven years ago. (UW Photo)